Internet access has become an important part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States and abroad. Access to the Internet is useful for communication via e-mail and other electronic media. Of course, Internet access is also useful for individuals wishing to pursue on-line research, follow the news, discuss a hobby with other enthusiasts, or simply entertain themselves with a variety of web sites. For whatever reason, Internet access has become an indispensable utility for many users.
Access to the Internet requires a connection between a user's computer and a server linked to the larger Internet so that data can be exchanged between the user's computer and the servers that make up the Internet. There are many ways to connect the user's computer to a server. One of the earliest, and still exceptionally popular, methods is to use the telephone network for a “dial-up” connection to a server.
For dial-up Internet access, a user's computer employees a modem, either internal to the computer or external to the computer, to dial over standard telephone lines a telephone number provided by the Internet service provider, or ISP, to access the ISP's server. The ISP server is then connected to the Internet, typically via any of various broadband connections. The user's modem converts between packet based data transmitted by the computer and the circuit based connection used by the telephone system. Essentially, the user's modem converts between different signal formats. When the modem call is placed, it is connected to a modem linked to a server provided by the ISP. The ISP modem performs a function similar to that performed by the user's modem, in that it converts between the signals between itself and the telephone modem to a format suitable for use with the ISP server that accesses the internet. Obtaining an available ISP modem can be difficult if dial-up usage is high, leading to busy signals delivered to users. Even when dial-up calls can be received by an available ISP modem, a high volume of calls that are poorly distributed to available modems will lead to poor modem performance, such as dropped calls, unacceptably slow modem performance, and hanging modems that do not disconnect but cease to respond to the user.
The industry includes a wide variety of firms that describe themselves as ISPs, from very small businesses to national and multi-national corporations. At the larger end of the industry, the ISPs are household names, with a truly nationwide (and sometimes greater) presence, with customers in every region of America. Such ISPs typically do not own the modems they use to allow their customers to access the Internet, and instead lease access to modems maintained by others, such as telecommunication companies. Regardless of who actually owns the ISP modems that customers must connect with to access the internet, the principles of modem availability and allocation are the same.
Maintaining adequate available modems presents a serious challenge to an ISP. Too few available modems results in busy signals, poor modem performance, connection difficulties, and other technical errors ultimately resulting in lost customers and decreased revenue. However, modems are costly and providing more than necessary seriously impacts the finances of an ISP. In the rapidly changing business climate of the Internet in general, and ISP's in particular, all unnecessary costs must be eradicated in face of declining margins. Maintaining the proper amount of available ISP modems that adequately balances the needs of customers with ISP finances can be difficult. Particularly difficult is predicting future demand of dial-up services. Unfortunately, an error in the prediction in future demand, either predicting too high or predicting too low, can be costly either in terms of unnecessary capital expenditures or customer dissatisfaction.
Typical dial-up Internet usage patterns exacerbate the difficulties of providing an adequate, but not excessive, amount of ISP modems. Dial-up Internet usage typically peaks during evening hours. Non-peak usage, for example during the working day or late at night, is typically only a small fraction of peak usage. This usage pattern results in modems that were acquired by an ISP to meet peak usage demands sitting idle during a substantial portion of the day. Obviously, idle modems are a poorly utilized resource that adds unnecessary costs to an ISP's business operation.
Factors besides usage patterns can impact the availability of modems provided by an ISP. Most notably, activities such as maintenance, upgrading, and repairing an ISP's facilities can result in limited modem availability or outages. Of course, to the degree that the ISP can control the timing of maintenance, it will typically be scheduled during off-peak times when usage will be low. Real world situations sometimes prevent such ideal scheduling from occurring. Unexpected events can lead to partial or complete outages of available modem. Also, once maintenance or upgrade has begun, unexpected events can delay the completion of that work into peak-usage time.
Many ISP's cover a large geographic area, requiring multiple modem centers to provide local dial-up ISP modem telephone numbers for customers. At present, dial-up ISP users on one coast of the United States may be receiving busy signals while modems for the same ISP sit idle on the other coast. A system allowing for over-flow dial-up traffic to be directed to another location during peak-usage times would benefit both the dial-up ISP's and dial-up ISP customers by providing additional available modems when needed without requiring capital investment to acquire modems to sit idle at non-peak times. To date, attempts to solve problems related to excess demand placed upon the modems available on a particular modem center have typically focused on allowing calls to be redirected to other modems at the same modem center. Unfortunately, this typical solution of adding modems locally is unsatisfactory, as ISP modems added to meet time of day peak demand capacity needs will remain idle off peak demand times, which is most of a day. During the few hours of the day when additional ISP modems added locally to meet local demand peaks, other, geographically remote, modems will be largely idle, their local peak usage time either having already passed or not yet occurred. No prior system or method for routing dial-up calls for internet access among ISP modems has allowed geographically remote modems to be used to meet local peaks in demand for available ISP modems.